New Heights

Does booking your annual ski trip trigger sensations of déjà vu?
Rupert Mellor on how to carve a more exciting track this season.

ENLARGE

Gabe Rogel / Rogel Media

By

Rupert Mellor

Jan. 10, 2013 6:52 p.m. ET

Deep South

On a trip with Adventure Network International, you'll never see a lift, much less a lift queue. Facilitating expeditions to Antarctica since 1985, this specialist operator offers an unrivaled portfolio of snow safaris on the planet's least-visited continent for intrepid holidaymakers.

Antarctica is the coldest, highest, windiest and driest environment on Earth, with temperatures dipping below -40° Celsius even in the November-to-January period that passes for summer. With a population principally characterized by penguins, seals and a handful of hardy scientists, to visit is to join an elite club. And the rewards are legion—endless panoramas across glacial wilderness, contact with wildlife, and first ascents and descents in the Ellsworth Mountains' Heritage Range, Antarctica's prime ski terrain, yours for the taking.

Gear With an Edge

Touching down on ANI's blue-ice runway from Punta Arenas, Chile, travelers settle in on the continent with celebratory Champagne at the surprisingly cushy Union Glacier base camp. From there, ski touring groups led by experienced guides—polar record-breakers and Everest veterans among them—set off into the neighboring mountains for two weeks to explore the stark beauty of Connell Canyon, Pioneer Heights and the Soholt Peaks. From $25,750 (€19,700)

The extraordinary physical challenge of these trips is perhaps surpassed only by the region's uniquely unspoiled ecology, and each itinerary includes eye-opening lessons about local geology, history and animal life.

If that all sounds just a little too gentle, you could always sign up for ANI's extreme expeditions, which take adventurers from the coast to the planet's southernmost point. For $63,950, "Ski South Pole—Hercules" covers 1,170 kilometers over 61 days, while "Ski South Pole—Messner" takes you on a 51-day trek across a 934-kilometer traverse for $56,950. The bespoke "Footsteps of Amundsen" itinerary leads visitors on a route first taken by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen (price upon request).

All Night Long

With its puny 410 meters of vertical drop and just six lifts, you could be forgiven if Riksgränsen in Swedish Lapland had never crossed your winter sports radar. But at the heart of this unpicturesque village 200 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, with its trailer parks and mining-town architecture, burns the pioneering spirit of mountain adventure that far predates the cookie-cutter chalets and sophisticated lift systems that have come to define the modern mainstream ski holiday.

You'll find no fancy facilities here—although the tasteful renovation of Meteorologen Ski Lodge, the former customs house, has recently given the town its first four-star establishment—and you're more likely to raise an après glass with a reindeer farmer than a fellow jet-setter. But that doesn't seem to bother the freeskiers and riders who flock here during the February-to-June season one bit.

For them, the formal ski area effectively serves as a jumping-off point, a gateway to vast tracts of challenging off-piste terrain studded with cliff drops, creamy powder stashes, edge-of-your-seat steeps and wide, rolling slopes. Ski touring extends the possibilities still further, with many popular routes crossing the border into Norway.

New this year, Northern Lights Golf, with rounds played (fingers crossed) under the Aurora Borealis's glow, joins an activities roster bristling with rugged pursuits like snowmobiling, ice fishing, snowshoeing and dog sledding.

Local heli-skiing operation Mountain Guide Travel serves more than 100 peaks across an area the size of the Netherlands, with a half-day comprising three drops starting at around 2,700 kronor (or €316). But come mid-May, you don't even need a chopper to access a truly exceptional ski or boarding experience. Thanks to the 24-hour sunlight that takes over the Lapp sky at this time of year and the seasonally adjusted lift schedule, you can tear up the pistes until 1 a.m. every Monday and Friday between May 13 and 24.

Matt Annetts of the U.S. in the Fieberbrunn contest at the Swatch Freeride World Tour 2012
Andy Schaad

Set Yourself Free

Every winter, the cream of the world's freeskiers and riders—athletes whose passion is for taking on the steepest, wildest descents just the way nature made them—come together in a competition series that challenges them to conquer some of most technically exacting peaks that Europe, the U.S. and Canada have to offer.

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This year, the sport's various skiing and boarding strands have been united under the new banner of the Swatch Freeride World Tour, giving freeriding its biggest platform to date. And there is a place on it for you, if you dare.

Following overwhelming demand last year for a handful of opportunities for experienced amateurs to ski or board with pro riders, the organizers have created a range of hospitality packages on the tour's legs in Chamonix, France; Fieberbrunn, Austria; and Verbier, Switzerland, the event's climactic final and the most prestigious freeriding event of them all.

Among these packages, the "Euphoraline Freeride Experience" deals offer the kind of trip money (usually) can't buy, including swanky dinners, premium accommodations, access to the catered club area for the best views of all the nail-biting action, a VIP party, and, most importantly, a session riding with one of the competitors, scoping out and analyzing a descent before taking it on together. From €1,400

A one-off sister event, the Swatch Skiers Cup—dubbed the Ryder Cup of freeriding—adds a helicopter ride around the Matterhorn on the way to watch Team America and Team Europe do downhill battle in the Swiss mountain Mecca of Zermatt. From €2,400

Alta Cucina

Pairing bracing descents with to-die-for dining is nothing new, but in their continuing mission to take alpine Epicureanism to new heights, the gracious hosts of Italy's Alta Badia are this season cooking up more imaginatively indulgent treats than ever. Watched over by the dramatic peaks of the Dolomites, the valley's six villages pool their finest foodie resources in the season-long "A Taste for Skiing" program, offering guests opportunities to sample refined twists on local South Tyrolean delicacies from daybreak til long after dark.

The gourmet day begins high above the valley with "Breakfast on the Peaks," 8 a.m. feasts offered by Corvaro's Col Alto and San Cassiano's Las Vegas mountain huts. Both prepare lavish spreads of local farmhouse goodies—breads, cheeses, eggs, meats and preserves—for their snowcat-borne guests before waving them off to carve the day's first tracks and still be in time to take the first lift back up. €15 per person

When lunchtime rolls around, each of the 12 mountain restaurants offers a signature dish created by some of the area's most accomplished chefs (three of them Michelin-starred), while the Santa Croce ski tour guides you to the huts that produce the best traditional recipes. And in the unlikely event of between-meals hunger pangs—or the need for a lighter bite on the move—Slope Food, a new concept this year, features gourmet finger-foods developed by six local and international chefs, showcasing local produce and traditions. Dishes from €7

You can even take some of these Tyrolean tastes home with you. In weekly cooking courses at the rustic Maso Sotciastel farmhouse in Badia, lady of the house Erica Pitscheider shares kitchen secrets passed down through generations of her family, teaching guests to prepare local Ladin specialties such as dumplings and strudel. €15 per person

Child's Play

Over the past 15 years, Les Menuires has worked hard to shed its former image as the ugly duckling of France's famous 3 Vallées, the world's largest linked ski area. Defined for decades by its modernist 1960s architecture (which, ironically, is now enjoying a design renaissance), the resort has taken on a softer silhouette with new Old World wood-and-stone chalet-style buildings. One of the main factors contributing to its transformation is an excellent and imaginative family provision, especially for those with young children.

There are the Piou-Piou activity clubs for little people aged between 3 months and 5 years; sledging at the Sliding Castle; the Walibi Gliss, a gentle, music-enhanced boarder-cross course; the Roc'n Bob toboggan run and Roc'n Bike course; and the swimming pools and bouncy delights of the 4,500-square-meter sports center.

But most impressive is the season-long program of special events designed with families in mind, the crowning glory of which is the free Boule de Notes festival, taking place this year March 9-16. Taking over various venues, as well as the snowy streets of the resort, this interactive, anarchic and quintessentially Gallic celebration of words, music and engagingly oddball characters offers entertainment from musical clowns to cartoonish '70s disco dudes, from Colbock "the rocking cow" to a giant baby who drives his pram like he's in Formula 1. With several performances each day, it is a gift to the up-to-12s (and their parents) and, best of all, your kids won't even notice how much good it is doing their French skills. Quel result!

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